Much to my embarrassment, I hadn’t considered some of the mortal dangers faced by giraffes. 

“If there’s a lightning leader already approaching the ground, it will certainly look for something tall to hit in its immediate vicinity,” says Professor David Smith of the University of California’s physics department. “Since water is pretty conductive (particularly salty water), your giraffe is a pretty good conductor and probably does attract lightning pretty well.”

Oh, it gets sadder and a little bizarre:  

Lightning strikes may be a significant danger to giraffes in environments that have few tall trees and are topographically or geologically predisposed to attract lightning. One eyewitness report suggests that, during lightning storms, giraffes lower their heads and may even compete with one another to become lower in height… Between 1996 and 1999 the Rhino and Lion Reserve near Krugersdorp, South Africa, had two of its three giraffes killed by lightning – the third animal, a juvenile, was also struck but survived. Betsy the giraffe was killed by lightning at Walt Disney World in Florida in 2003 in front of lots of witnesses.

I’m guessing the combination of giraffes and lightning isn’t something readers had given much thought either. See? We’re learning together.

On second viewing the film is no less striking and surreal, as when Rorschach breaks into the lab of an enormous, luminous Dr Manhattan, whose buttocks are proudly aglow.

My review of the Watchmen Director’s Cut has been posted over at the Eye blog.

The theatrical release was reviewed here.

Hardly anyone is going to openly defend muddled thinking or disrespect for evidence. Rather, what people do is to surround these practices with a fog of verbiage designed to conceal from their listeners – and in most cases, I would imagine, from themselves as well – the true implications of their way of thinking. George Orwell got it right when he observed that the main advantage of speaking and writing clearly is that “when you make a stupid remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself.”

Further to this, this, this and any number of things in the archive, the following may be of interest. Here’s Alan Sokal, speaking in Stockholm, May 2009, on the scientific worldview – and its opponents. Targets include practitioners of pseudo-medicine, theologians and the priestly caste of postmodernist bamboozlers. It’s a long speech and Sokal’s own leftist reflexes intrude a little too often, especially towards the end, but there are nuggets to be had. There’s an amusing schtick involving the substitution of theological fuzzwords with something more direct, and this, on religious truth claims:

The astronauts were more than excited to feel the ground, though standing on it was too hard for them after spending so many days in the state of weightlessness.

After 191 days, Soyuz TMA-11 and its three human occupants returned to Earth from the International Space Station, landing in Kazakhstan, April 19, 2008. A partial separation failure caused a ballistic re-entry that in turn caused the spacecraft to land 475 km from its intended landing site. The occupants, Yuri Malenchenko, Peggy Whitson and Yi So-Yeon, were assisted by local residents who discovered the charred spacecraft resting in their fields.

Impact craters of note. // Hidden water. // Big hair, sideburns and mainframes. (h/t, Coudal) // A compendium of temporal anomalies. // Tactile holograms inching closer. // Tentacles in New York. // Plant structures. // The root bridges of Cherrapungee. // Temporary fixes. // From terrorist to tenure. // Bacon-wrapped, cream cheese-stuffed jalapeno thingies. // The deadly buttocks of Astro Boy. // I think I see a problem with the kinetic lamp. // LED graffiti. // Remarkable motorcycles. // Electrical wire octopus. // What to do with a concrete stalker. // And, via The Thin Man, it’s Mr Hoagy Carmichael.  

Pioneering adverts of the West, 1867-1918. 

The marvellous Mrs Gunn and her bust-restoring oils, 1917. “No parafine used.”

Michael Yon is in Afghanistan with the British military. 

  

Some people say the Taliban are cowardly for planting bombs, but I do not believe this makes them any more cowardly than the A-10s, Apaches, B-1Bs and Reapers make us cowardly. We didn’t come here for a fair fight. We came to win. Some troops even say that if you show up to a battle and find it’s evenly matched, you didn’t plan well. What most of us find cowardly and despicable are the enemies who hide behind children. The bombs they plant for us are fair play. But males who hide behind children are not worthy of respect.

His site really should be in your blogroll. Via Mr Eugenides. 

From the ephemera archives, more irregular listening.

Liz Brady: Palladium (The Hip). (1966) 

Gilbert Bécaud: Quand Tu Danses. (1953)

Richard Cheese: Ice Ice Baby. (2006) 

Señor Coconut: Showroom Dummies. (2000) 

John Barry: The Ipcress File. (1965)

Shirley Maclaine: Big Spender. (1969)  

Tommy McCook and the Skatalites: Dr Zhivago. (1969) 

Rose Murphy: Busy Line. (Circa 1940s)

Hayseed Dixie: Monster Mash. (2005) 

John Morris & Mel Brooks: Young Frankenstein. (1976)

Previous mixtapes: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. 

Here’s James Paterson beta-testing Amit Pitaru’s Rhonda software.

Via Drawn!

“The user’s touch and the temperature of the environment make two giant testicles retract and descend.” // Superhero essentials. // Chicago from on high. // Hiroshima, 64 years ago. // Cardboard clouds. // God of Small Things. // Hide your diamond. // Mattress dominoes. // Mobile bar and restaurant. // Your very own personal satellite. // Paint and water. // Photoshop fridge magnets. // Regrow lost teeth. // Red Rabbit. // Itty-bitty cars. // On tax and the “social contract.” // Steed and Mrs Peel in The Town of No Return. Part 2, 3, 4, 5. (h/t, SDA) // And, via The Thin Man, it’s the Imperial March.